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What happens at 3am...

24/10/2018

You know that feeling you get when you wake up at 3am, scribble down a brilliant idea and then in the morning it turns out to be rubbish? There’s even a mythology for it – fairy gold, which turns to dust at daybreak. Well, I woke up at 2.30am this morning, scribbled frantically for the best part of an hour, then went back to sleep. This morning, I found this, written all over my pillows in indelible laundry marker. I tend to be stubborn about not losing my ideas.

Because I think I might like my 3am self if I ever met him, I’m going to keep what he did, and the simplest way to do that is to copy it all down here. In a clumsy attempt to make this look like a deliberate, wide-awake, premeditated blog post, I’ve added some questions at the end – so could we all pretend that this is the mid-term exam for anybody who reads this regularly? The questions are optional, obviously, and I have absolutely no idea what I would do if you sent me some answers.

But hey, why not? My 3am self wrote this – as follows:

Isn’t there a creation myth whereby The Great Editor In The Sky took a rib from the first man and used it as the basis for creating the first woman? Quite a popular creation myth, I believe, leading in time to publications such as Spare Rib and movements such as #MeToo. Odd one, though: you would have to have a sophisticated understanding of human anatomy - or the familiarity that would come from running the cannibal equivalent of a steak house with ribs on the menu - even to start wondering: why’s she got one more than I have?

Small children may tickle each other, but they don’t persist until they’re counting ribs. And both adults and small children alike tend to notice other differences than bone structure when looking at each other’s, um, bits. I imagine The Great E. in the S. planned from the outset that there would be two, a matching pair; otherwise, why make that bit on the man like that, and so on? The question of how many it takes to tango would have been uppermost in said Creator’s mind even before the personal pronouns were handed out. If I put this bit here on this one, and this bit here on that one…

In fact, we all have twelve pairs of ribs. Sorry. Our skeletons are different, and whole genres of television drama sustain themselves on being able to tell, for example that the body on the examination table was the pizza-loving daughter of the university vice-chancellor who found out about the creepy janitor’s drug-smuggling operation, but ribs only ever come into it if one of them has been microscopically nicked by a blow-pipe dart made from the venom of a snake indigenous to that remote area where the friendly and helpful grad student from earlier on in the show happened to mention visiting last Summer.

Snakes are big in creation myths, but ribs just aren’t important, surely? Snakes turn up - roughly at the same point in a good creation myth as the totally innocent-seeming grad student says a brief hello and talks about his holidays in a detect-by-numbers TV drama. That makes sense. But why ribs? I’m guessing: close to the heart. If a creation myth is an early response to a need just to have some kind of an explanation rather than nothing, well, yeah, okay, the first one gets made from available materials and for the second one, there’s a not-yet-automated process akin to cell division.

All of the above works perfectly well however you distribute he and she, She and He. First woman, first man; doesn’t matter. Gaia or some patriarchal figure - never mind. We’re here now. But think of the power of those early storytellers. They’re trying to snooze off a wild-boar lunch, but the tribe’s children (of a certain age) won’t stop asking awkward questions, so they make up something about ribs – while ambush-tickling them, perhaps – and that’s what gets remembered down the millennia. Not the tribe’s important contribution to plant science, say, or the interminable song cycle by the officially revered poet – but that chance remark about ribs. Why?

And why ribs? Close to the heart, maybe, yes, but really, I’m asking – this is where the questions start. Why not half of this one’s heart, or the breath out of this one, or open up the ribs and take out – what? If you had to make up a creation myth on the fly, after a good lunch, how would you explain the coming-into-being of mummy and daddy to an audience of children armed with blowpipes and slingshots?

And why snakes? No, don’t answer than one. What about the absolutely first man/woman? You’ve got an assembly kit made up of, okay, a rib for the second of the two, but where do you start with the first? A lump of clay? Or remodel one of those furry little bunnies? Perhaps one of those less cuddly furry creatures swinging from branch to branch? Candidates are invited to supply their own creation myth, max. 1,000 words, accounting for: mummy and daddy, the rabbit, that butterfly and those primates. Extra marks will be given for beginning with the creation of the universe and the invention of gravity.

But seriously - why ribs? Is history full of failed creation myths where the raw material was collarbones, or internal organs (please specify), or toenail clippings? Or do we just have a cultural thing about ribs? Why?

And if there’s anybody out there who knows anything about washing out indelible laundry marker, I have a bonus question for you.

In Sydney, they have one of these. A spiral maze fountain thing. I was in a hurry, so I didn't look for a plaque, or nameplate, or whatever. But an interesting thing. All but two of the spiralling walkways have water flowing down them. You can walk to the centre, feet more or less dry, and leave by another way.

There is the notion of "big data". People who take themselves off to vast international conferences on finance and technology, financial technology, fintech, tend to develop views on big data. Sometimes, they write blog posts on the subject...

Thinking aloud just for a moment, the idea behind "big data" - big data as a Thing, with a capital T - is that everything we do online generates data. It's big because it's detailed and comprehensive; every move I make generates more data. Whenever I use a search engine, I'm generating a micro-byte of data on my interests. If I google, let's say, a leather wallet, I'm telling Google that I'm interested in leather wallets. Other examples are available. I know, because the pop-up ads keep reminding me, that I search-engined bistro tables the other day. And I'm haunted by ads for office furniture.

Was I really looking for office furniture? Must have been. I remember that bistro-table impulse; I wanted something for just outside the back door. Item of big data, therefore: William's interested in bistro tables. Add that to the great complexity of data that is held about me. Add that to the location data from my phone; the embarrassing data from my browser; the CCTV; the medical, financial and other records if you can access them; the social-media indiscretions from way back. Because big data isn't just made up of signals I send deliberately. Facebook knows me as well as I can be known from everything I've ever done there; my mobile phone travels with me, so my telco knows where I am; every purchase online, or post, or - whatever other example of a capturable event you care to suggest - tells the big-data industry something about me.

And in theory, therefore, every approach to me, commercial or otherwise, can be fine-tuned on the basis of everything that is known about me. Which implies that all my enthusiasms and interests can be matched to an appropriate provider. I search for a table - you offer me a table. I buy an ebook; you pitch ebooks on similar themes. You don't at any point, ask me what I want, because you're confident that you know me well enough to be sure of your welcome. [Or because you deal in categories of customer, rather than people? Let's not go there.] And you use me for your statistical modelling: people behave this way; men behave that way; men of this age and that income bracket claim to do this but actually do something else entirely. All the way down to: this individual wants to read an ebook about bistro tables.

I don't have a problem with any of this. If you're fixated on offering exactly what I want to buy, at the moment I want to buy it, I'm on your side. Please continue. Or rather, please start. Stop all the pop-up ads about office furniture, because I don't have an office that needs furnishing - as you would know if you looked closely enough at my big data. Stop bugging me with ads for bistro tables - surely you've noticed that recent transaction on my credit card? The garden centre? The hardwood bistro table? Yes, okay, I'll take your word for it that I'm interested in office furniture, but that might have been the time I was looking for a kneeling chair - I was looking for solutions to back pain. Nice try, but I'm okay now. Thanks.

Big data is useful in theory. In practice, I wonder whether analysing my behaviour, and the patterns of my behaviour, is as reliable as it "should" be. You can put together a profile of me and my interests, using big data, as easily as you might draw a line around my shadow. But I move. My shadow moves. The light changes. A cloud crosses the sun. I bought that ebook, and enjoyed it, but today I feel like bingeing on a box set. Sorry, but I'm too human, too unpredictable, to live up to my big data. And no, I know, you can't ask me what I'm going to want tomorrow because even I don't know that. I may fit a demographic, but I'm an individual. Too idiosyncratic even to align my wants, needs and desires precisely with my interests.

Big data is a tool, and a useful one I'm sure. But I reserve the right to be myself. If you want to sell stuff to me, that's great. But keep this in mind: even if I have just written a blog post mentioning bistro tables, and office furniture, and ebooks, right now I'm really only interested in spending significant money on [some text missing here]. You could work that out from my accumulated big data, of course, although it's just today's unpredictable impulse, but you've never even thought of sending me an ad for one of those, have you?

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Going walkalong

16/10/2018

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So I've done some travelling just recently, and what I can tell you is this. Whatever it is, wherever it is, it's miles away. We talk about international travel as though the key thing is sitting in a cramped little seat - or a reclining big seat; my employer for this trip kindly shelled out for business class - and eating a funny little lunch - an agreeably big lunch in the business lounge, then another one on the plane - before choosing from a list of films that you didn't watch while they were in the cinema.

International travel is actually going on a long walk. You walk from your car to the bus stop in the long-stay car park, then you walk from the drop-off point to the machine that scans your passport and divulges a boarding card. Then you finally get rid of your suitcase, shuffle through security - where they take your belt and shoes; doesn't that just capture the romance of travel? - and then finally it's wandering through the shops, barely anywhere to sit down unless you buy something, before you embark on the long trek to Gate B6. Most of that is walking, sometimes on flat escalators (travelators?), but sometimes it involves train rides. Miles and miles of distance just to start your journey.

Hours later, the plane touches down, trundles around the runways for a while, and then docks at a gate that's several miles from passport control and baggage reclaim. You walk down the same long, grey, metal corridors, occasionally passing small outposts of high-street coffee chains, or maybe those were before the flight; occasionally seeing, through glass, walkers like you, heading in the opposite direction. More travelators, escalators, lifts, posts to stop you taking trolleys beyond certain points, mile upon mile of grey, grey corridor until finally - no. Not there yet. More grey corridors. Advertisements in which banks try to be catchy about how clever they are. Pictures of national monuments.

When, after several hours' hard walking, you arrive at whatever comes next, you can't get to it without navigating a waist-high labyrinth of retractable crowd-control barriers. You know the things? Posts with tape stretched between them. You walk ten paces north, u-turn, ten paces south, ditto, ditto, and instead of digging up treasure at the end of this, you've walked two back-and-forth miles across ten paces' worth of space, for the pleasure of standing behind a line on the floor until some uniformed person behind glass beckons you forward to stand on two painted feet on the floor while he/she conveys by facial expression what he/she thinks of your passport.

What if the people who faked the moon landing had gone into airport design? No, wait - what if the people who make the ads had been put in charge of making the reality? Instead of traipsing for miles to be regarded with suspicion at the end, we'd take whatever sedative it is that makes people sleep in airline seats with blissful smiles on their faces, and we'd be passed through the system with our baggage. Oh, bliss, to be a suitcase and travel in ignorance. And I haven't even begun to plumb the depths of economy class. It has been easy, this time, to break the long walks with ten hours' then nine hours' rest in a reclining chair with a cinema screen, blankets and a bell to summon a team of immaculate young Korean women with access to free champagne.

Nor has it been overly problematic to settle in the business lounge, grazing on the buffet during the stop-over in Seoul, dozing in the reclining chairs. And how easy it has been to acquiesce in a system whereby everybody else gets the cramped seats; everybody else gets to compete for a place to sit down, to pay for their drinks, to queue, while we sit there discussing the novel beer tap that fills the glass from underneath - put the glass on the tap, which is flush with the surface of the bar, and watch it fill up again. Clever of somebody to think of that - a glass with a one-way thing - What's the word? Valve? - in the bottom: beer goes in and stays in until you drink it.

But then, the walking. Oh, the walking. The suitcase again, rolling along on its little wheels, hitting every bump, unwieldy; the airport itself a long corridor merging abruptly with a shopping mall and a rail terminal; the coaches to the hotels ... down there, left at the end, and then ... walk. And the entrance to your hotel is ... see that pedestrian overpass? That'll take you over the railway track...

I've lost track of times zones and hours spent in the air, but this much I can tell you: my bedroom in Sydney, Australia is at least a ten-mile hard walk from my bedroom in Falmouth, Cornwall.

Sitting at a round white table in the International Convention Centre, Sydney, writing a caption for this picture of a path in Queen Mary Gardens, Falmouth, fresh from a session on the internet and its flaws - and how they might be fixed.

In front of me is a glass wall. Through the glass is Darling Harbour: the horizon, which is but a(nother) short(ish) walk away, is blocked out with office buildings: Allianz; Commonwealth Bank; Rabobank. At ground level (sic) is the harbour: water with motorboats and slow yellow watertaxis; a far shore with restaurants, a walkway along the shore; an acquarium; to my right through the glass, flyovers, one of which curves round to the left and runs above the walkway.

To my extreme left, after the footbridge across the water, is a ferris wheel, and then - inside the glass - the escalators to and from the next level up. Here comes another water taxi and that's an Australian flag. This post is the second of two cheats - the first went in under the picture last week - and it comes from the same place. I wrote it back in August 2018 and posted it on the Second Website. It should be here, so - it is here. Lightly edited, but I haven't redone the calculations. All up to date as of several months ago. I think my point would be made more strongly if I did redo the calculations, but - long flight, busy week, actually very interesting week, and to get straight to the key stumbling block - nuh.

So here goes. Think back to August.

Pity we can’t do a simulation of the Second World War, but with added social media. The British government declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939. What happened next was the “Phoney War”, a period of some eight months in which hardly anything warlike happened. I could imagine the petitions against the war, the Facebook groups, the political opposition to the prime minister in particular, Chamberlain, and the Conservative (Tory) government in general*.

Eight months after the British declaration of war, on 10th May 1940, Germany invaded Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Chamberlain resigned on that day, having survived a vote of confidence** so narrowly that his position had become untenable. The establishment candidate, Lord Halifax, did not become prime minister; the outsider, Churchill, did.

The historical parallels with today are wearisome. Yes, the British made a big decision vis-a-vis Europe a little while back; yes, there hasn’t been much progress on anything; yes, the government isn’t making friends and influencing people with its handling of today’s big issues; oh, and yes, there’s a conspicuous outsider whose every move is analysed in terms of whether or not he’s going to take over as prime minister and, er, save us all.

Idling around on social media the other day, I came across an argument on Facebook about Brexit. Yes, they still have those. Brrrzzz is either a bad idea or a very bad idea and the Brexiters are going to get their come-uppance because young people are going to win the People’s Vote and thus, er, save us all. So there. That was pretty much the whole of it. I see these things occasionally, and I get the sense that most of the Brexiters (sure it used to be Brexiteers) have left the other lot to get on with it, and gone home. They know what they think. Minds are closed on both sides.

Anyway. I thought about that WW2 simulation, and then I thought: I wonder where we’d be now. The Brrrrzzzz Vote happened on 23rd June 2016. From that date to now, allowing for my maths ability and a degree of vagueness about what day it is today anyway, a grand total of 779-ish days have passed. 779 days, and we’re still arguing over Chamberlain’s declaration of - sorry. Over the result of (let’s call it) David Cameron’s Referendum.

779 days into the Second World War would have been, let me see, somewhere around 22nd October 1941. First anniversary of the end of the Battle of Britain coming up, German forces at the gates of Moscow, maybe beginning to feel a bit chilly; US and Japanese governments preparing for peace talks in early November (Japanese government also looking at preliminary plans for the bombing of Pearl Harbour on 7th December, I guess). Battle of the Atlantic well under way.

779 days into the Second World War, a lot had happened and was still happening. 31st October 1941 was also the last day of carving at Mount Rushmore, I see. Interesting. Life continues, even in wartime. None of this proves anything and I’m not trying to demonstrate anything - and yes, I could mention a lot else that happened in 1941. I’m just glad that we’re here, now, 779 days in, nobody trying to kill us, still arguing over precisely how catastrophic the declara- sorry, the Brexit vote was.

At least we’ve got time for it, eh? We’d have been a lot busier in 1941, 779 days into the Second World War. Aren’t we lucky that we’ve got such a relatively benign Worst Catastrophe Ever on our hands? Whatever the trade terms, at least nobody’s going to be trying to sink our cross-channel ferries like they did the Atlantic Convoys.
*The National Government of the time was led by the Conservative majority in the House Of Commons.
**Imagine the clamour around of the Norway Debate in the House of Commons. If you’re me, you’ll find Wikipedia’s account of the debate itself fascinating.

Can't rid myself of the thought that there's an innovation missing. We have artificial intelligence, robotics, the internet of things, the blockchain, early-stage quantum computing ... and I don't think it quite works to fit all of our present challenges to this convenient set of new solutions. There's one more piece of the jigsaw. No idea what it is, but let's think towards the next innovation rather than assume that we've been innovative enough already.

Before it's too late, maybe we could find a university to conduct research into how much today's relatively new technologies have changed us. Not sure how to structure it, but some kind of comparative study of the millennial generation, their parents' generation (who would be the "digital immigrants", yes?), their parents' generation. Not to judge, but to some to some kind of understanding of the one thing we can't understand as we sit here - how our understanding isn't what it was before we upgraded to whatever tech add-ons we're depending on to get us through the day.

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Human rites

16/10/2018

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Oh, I feel my age sometimes. Tried earlier to buy an A4 pad, ruled, for taking notes at next week’s conference. The first option had on the front “Jotta”, which is not how I write “jotter”, and there was also the “Exec-Jotta”, which was fatter by 100 pages. In the public domain, we worry about education, standards, et cetera. In my private domain, I like to get the spelling right. I’d hate to sit in a room full of serious adults wearing suits, holding a jotter labelled “Jotta”. Maybe that’s just me.

Along the shelf was the “Easy-Riter”, which is not how I spell “writer”, nor indeed “Easy Rider”. If only I had a sense of humour. Then I picked up a pad which opened to a sheet - thick A4 card, not paper - full of instructions that you’d have to bend out of the way before you could write anything. I didn’t read them, but the next possibility opened up to a similar-but-paper sheet of instructions on how to download - something. Didn’t read far enough to find out what, but sent a kind thought towards whoever had thought to (1) perforate the edge of that sheet of instructions, and (2) make it light enough to screw into a small ball.

The A4 pad I eventually bought is free of obstacles to me just opening it up and writing my notes. Except - there is a small logo in each of the four corners of every sheet, front and back. That doesn’t matter particularly, except that I think each of these tiny logos might be scannable, so I shall have to keep my smartphone out of range of my A4 pad. I know they might be scannable because this A4 pad also comes with instructions on how to download - something. But they’re printed on the inside front cover, so they won’t get in the way, and I’ll probably tear off the front cover anyway.

My instructions are headed “Enjoy 100% of your Oxford notebook,” with the subtitle “Scan - Save - Organise”, and beneath that is a picture of an A4 pad different from mine - opens sideways not up and over - with a phone lying on it. Beneath the picture is the message “Download SCRIBZEE for free”. Why? No reason given, but at least there’s a special offer. Further down, beneath a horizontal rule, there’s a final instruction: “With SCRIBZEE by Oxford take advantage of an Evernote Premium special offer.” Again, why? “Evernote lets you stay productive, at work or on the go.”

That’s kind of Evernote. But I’m pretty sure I can “enjoy 100% of my Oxford notebook” - sorry, I’ve been calling it an A4 pad - just by scribbling notes on it. 95% of it anyway, because as I said, I’ll tear off the cover. My notes will consist of quotable remarks, observations, headings (underlined) and times from the digital recorder I’ll also have running on the table in front of me. I’ll also have my phone there, of course, and I’ll have to tear off that cover because it has a barcode on it. I’m not saying that my A4 pad is on heat exactly, just because it has a barcode, but. Full stop. Enough of that.

Snipping off the corners of each page won’t be necessary after all, I suspect, although I reserve the right to drop my phone into the cup of coffee I’ll also have on the table if it starts behaving inappropriately. Or pour cold water on it (memo to self: carry bottle of water). The idea is to record the sessions I’ll be attending, noting down remarks of particular interest (and their timing, as I said, so I can find them again on the recording), so that I come away with my own written and recorded record (sic) of what was said. Yes, it will all go into the public domain pretty quickly via YouTube, but I like to do my own thinking with my own notes. Handwritten, yes.

Exactly how old am I, you ask? I know - I sound very old. But I don’t feel old because I see the weirdness of note-taking equipment decorated with deliberate misspellings, nor because I don’t need Evernote’s permission to stay productive, at work or on the go. Nor do I feel old because I’ve no idea what SCRIBZEE might be (I’ve heard of Evernote) and don’t intend to find out, and nor do I feel old because all that verbiage about enjoying 100% of my Oxford notebook (I bought an A4 pad, and not the one in the picture) makes me giggle. It’s an inadvertent art form.

No, I feel old, because back in the old days, we used to do stuff. We used to start doing stuff, do it, and then stop. When I were a lad, walking up the cobbled streets of the old mill town in my clogs and my enormous flat cap, my ears sticking out, while the backing track played a dirge and the voice-over delivered an old-grandad monologue about the quality of the bread from the local bakery - back then, lad, I would go to the corner shop and I would buy an A4 pad with the pennies I'd saved up, and by ‘eck, lad, I would write notes on it. You mark my words. Write notes. In ink, lad, or pencil when times were hard. You don’t see that these days.

For me, the pleasing detail today is the first step. If I want to enjoy 100% of my Oxford notebook, step one is to scan. Then I save. Then I organise. The bit where I actually write something down is somehow implicit. Scanning is what I do to enjoy an A4 pad of ruled paper. Not writing. Yes, it is paper for writing - oh, never mind.

I have friends who swear by various forms of novel-writing software - these are programmes that do everything for them except actually have an idea for a novel. If you go by the writing on the sides of the buses around here, they’re in a Zen state of “Connecting Communities”. Get on the right one and it’ll take you to Truro, but that’s incidental to the greater, present-participle objective of “Connecting Communities”.

Have I mentioned that before? I think I have. Senile old fool. But at least I can spend my last years getting 100% enjoyment out of scanning, saving and organising the pages of my notebook. So much easier than actually having to write anything. Oh, brave new world in which so much of the focus is on visualising ourselves doing stuff - connecting communities, writing our novels, scanning our notes - rather than actually doing any of it.

Convincing proof - if proof were needed - that all the boats in the harbour don't just vanish when the sun is switched off at night. This was a dark night, clouds full of rain, and the only illumination came from the somewhat garish cruise ship just above the top edge of the picture.

Okay, this one is a bit of a cheat. I wrote this post back in August, when I was having a conniption about my new laptop’s inability to get into the “edit my site” section of my Weebly account (solution to all problems; secret of happiness: clear your cache) and put it on my Second Website, which I set up in a hurry with Wix. Like Wix; happy with Wix; haven't been back. I don’t like to think of my blog post (almost) alone out there, and I’m seriously busy right now, packing my bags for my trip, finishing things and looking for my passport, so I’ve brought it back here. My rescued, lightly edited, blog post reads as follows:

News just in that social scientists are planning to use anonymised (I assume) Facebook data to work out how we behave. Other scientists are putting tags in sharks to work out where they swim, while the owners of drones are peering in through upstairs windows and over fences and reaching conclusions about - I don't know what. Some drone-owners aren't even scientists, I'm told, but never mind that now.

There's even a piece in this week's New Statesman magazine (“this week” in the sense of the week in August 2018 when I put this up at Wix) about how millennials are using Tarot cards to understand the directions their lives are taking. [That's how I like to spell 'millennials'. The spellcheck here doesn't seem to approve. But see the post above the picture about the spellcheck that escaped into the real world in my local A4-pad store. We know what you’re like, spellcheck.]

So my question is - then what? Scientists find out that we all spend our time checking our phones constantly. We find out that sharks gravitate to Massachusetts beaches where the police chief looks like - you know who I mean. We find that, for example: gravity works this way; dark matter is that; quantum science obeys these rules but not those; Schrodinger's cat was once a kitten and likes tuna (or doesn't); we're about to meet a tall dark stranger who will sell us a double mocha latte with chocolate powder sprinkled on top.

And then what? Science is about fear, isn't it? We're afraid of the unknown, and to the extent that we've lost the bearded-man-on-cloud explanation, we've replaced it with science. Everything's okay once scientists have demonstrated that there's a reason why it does what it does. We're all so relieved that the inexplicable something wasn't actually supernatural; it was in fact [insert bizarrely convoluted rational explanation here]. So that's okay, then.

One day, scientists will discover that all our romantic encounters are in fact being stage-managed by fat little flying babies - with wings as aerodynamic as bees' wings - carrying bows and arrows. They'll demonstrate conclusively that gravity works that way because the Angel of Gravity wants it to work that way, and a group of researchers will publish a paper demonstrating that quantum science was dreamed up by a very patient white-bearded figure in the course of a busy six-day week working on his hobby.

And all that will be perfectly rational and acceptable because scientists have explained it. Nothing woo-woo here; move along please; the scientists have got this one. The Federal Aviation Authority will come up with clauses governing the behaviour of small flying persons, and a number of dating websites will merge with baby-care centres.

And then we'll all relax. We'll go back to our phones, while sharks continue to swim, secure in the knowledge that we've found the key to all the mysteries. And then, gradually, without admitting it to ourselves, we'll get bored. We'll decide that we need a hobby. We'll switch on the technology, we'll fire up the digital assistants, and we'll get busy.

On the first day, we'll turn on the light.

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Selling the niggle

11/10/2018

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Sorry about this. [Spoiler alert: this post is going to be dull.] But I’m pretty sure the implicit promise of this blog is to share the true stuff as well as the flights of [you can decide what to call them]. So here goes.

Three days ago, I downloaded a software update to my phone. Yes, I know. Very routine. Not interesting at all. Not exciting. You know that, and so do I. But. If you haven’t left already, keep reading. Please nicely.

I’d spent a week telling the thing that I was happy without the upgrade. Possibly more than a week, but I don’t keep track. Somebody once told me to get a life, and the advice stung. I took it. My phone is a phone. I’m alive and I’m living … the dream, the daydream, the morning walk, the sudden idea, the routine task, the breakfast, the lower back pain, the shifts in Truro, the friends, the Writing Group, the articles, the books, the sound of the wind in that tree, the birds, that baby and her mother in the lift yesterday, the street music in Church Street earlier, the sunrise this morning, the beaches here, the freedom to write this blog and the rest of the life I went out and got, and I don’t have time for my phone’s electronically over-caffeinated artificial emotions.

But - you know phones and their combination of dogged insensitivity and not-quite-moral pressure? I’d be vulnerable in so many ways if I didn’t upgrade. My life would be so much better if I upgraded. I owed it to myself to do the sensible thing and upgrade. True happiness awaited me if only I would upgrade. Exciting new features, hand-picked Just For Me.

You understand that the [expletive deleted] phone wouldn’t shut up about the upgrade.

In fact, you know this. You own technology. You’ve been there. The phone did its thing during the night, and in the morning it was all excited: did I want to know about all the exciting new features that the upgrade had given me? No. Cancel, Cancel, Cancel, and I could get on with whatever it was I wanted to do with my phone that morning. Make a call, probably. It’s a phone. The word “lifestyle” doesn’t belong in the same sentence as that oddly heavy little rectangle. Nobody says “Get a lifestyle,” although it’s easy enough to be sold one.

Next morning, the same. Did I want to know? No. Press Cancel three times, to stop being told how exciting it all was, how thrilled I was, and I could finally make a call.

You understand - because you’ve been there - that by now I was fully committed to a contest with my phone. I was annoyed with it, and actively trying not to find out anything about these [expletive deleted] new features. I was excited, yes, but not in the way that the phone thought I was excited. Phones are stupid. Huh! You know the feeling?

Actually, I’m not sharing the story of my upgrade because it bothers me. No, really. I’m just mystified. When did we start having to deal with our technology’s insecurity?

Okay, I’m changing the subject now.

Thirty years ago this week, I bought myself a goldfish. It was a goldfish. Gold. A fish. In a rectangular tank. Glass. I bought various things for it to swim around and through, and read up about how its memory worked. I learned about water filters, feeding schedules, and how to spot the various ailments that might afflict my goldfish. Spellcheck doesn’t like afflict. That might cause unhappiness for my goldfish. I called it - him, her, no idea - Henry.

Two days later, I came down to find that there had been a break-in during the night. You know that creeping gradual realisation that something isn’t right? The tiny piece of paper that I wedge into the door frame had fallen to the floor. When I looked, I saw that there were scratches around the lock. But nothing was missing.

The only obvious clue I could find was a splash of water on the floor in the library. But the Sacred Bloodshot Dragon’s Eye Emerald (cursed, of course; found it in that tomb I visited, under the mummified corpse) was still in its place in the display cabinet, and in the absence of a slumped body with a knife in its back, or, say, a set of strange ritualistic symbols carved into the floor, I felt reasonably sure that - what? Somebody had come in and pretty quickly gone out again. Weird, but over the course of the day, I relaxed. A homeless person, perhaps, sleeping for an hour then spilling a glass of water before leaving? Maybe I should leave out a sandwich.

One thing: Henry seemed hungry that morning, and I made a note in my diary that he was clearly eating well - he looked as though he’d put on weight.

Two nights later, the same thing happened again. And this time - Henry was a full inch longer than he had been the night before. Very strange. I put him on light rations and installed a CCTV system, which meant in those days hiring a bunch of middle-aged men in shirtsleeves and cigar smoke to play cards in my spare bedroom while watching a bank of TV screens showing black-and-white views of the interior of my house.

Or not watching.

The next morning, I came down to find Henry gone, and in his place, a foot-long carp in a larger rectangular tank. As you might expect, I called the pet store. “Did you like the upgrade? Carp are considered to be sacred in…” I slammed down the phone, loaded the carp, in its tank, into my car and drove to the pet store. But my first Henry was gone. And the carp - they insisted on calling him (her?) Henry - was out of warranty.

It was fully a week later when I came down to find Henry The Carp - and his tank - gone. I phoned the pet store. “Did you like the upgrade? Very rare. White sturgeon have been around since…” I went out and looked at the tank that they’d dug into my back garden.

My views on upgrades haven’t changed since the day, many more than thirty years ago, when I presented a bunch of flowers to a close friend, and as I did so, the man from the flower shop reached past me and presented her with a bigger bunch of flowers. I did hesitate (back with the fish story again) when the low-loader arrived with the free submersible shark cage to accompany the next free upgrade - I mean, how many whale sharks do you need in a suburban garden? - but I suppose you would have to say that I got value for money.

My phone stays the same. I don’t have to worry that I’m going to wake up and find a bigger, brighter, more state-of-the-art and expensive device on the bedside table. No. Just the same old cracked-screen thing buzzing with a lot of big talk about new features. It’s the not shutting up that gets to me. That week of telling me how happy I’d be with the upgrade. The mismatch between the near-intimate insistence that the yapping little brick is going to make me happy, and its complete failure to listen to what I actually want. The thing’s pathetic attempts to be helpful. To get my attention.

Yes, I know there’s a constant battle going on with the forces of darkness, and if my phone doesn’t rinse itself through with an upgrade every now and then, it’s going to end up possessed by some bizarre malware that’s going to send $10,000 of my money to that bloke in Nigeria with the fortune to export, but can’t it just do that without having to tell me about it?

Just a thought, but have we passed peak usefulness with today’s smartphones? Do they know it? Could it be that simple? I wonder how it artificially feels, to live with the artificial knowledge that obsolescence is just around the corner? That as soon as somebody comes up with the next innovation that is an innovation and not just another app, you’ll be going into the drawer where the Psion Organiser lives, and the Palm Pilot, and the Commodore 64, never to come out again into the light?

Excuse me - oh, hello, [Social Media Utility That’s Been In The News A Lot Recently]. What’s that? You’ve rearranged your features to make yourself even more useful to me? That’s nice, dear, but I’m busy right now - no, I’m sure it’s all very exciting, but - look, I'm busy, could you - okay, you asked for it: Cancel, Cancel, Cancel.

More trees dancing, although this time I suspect that the wind had something to do with it.

What possessed [Credit-Card Company That Just Sent Me An Unsolicited Mailshot] to send me a brown envelope? I don’t want a [That Brand Of Credit Card], and in fact it’s some years since I parted company with credit cards altogether. But a brown envelope? Aren’t they reserved for bad news from tax authorities?

Anyway. Whatever. “William, here’s your 0% interest balance transfer offer (20 months with a 0% fee).” Okay. Should I be wondering how that twenty-first month would feel? “Hello William,” says the line under the bit I’ve just quoted. I’ve never met these people, and if any of the hype about big data and algorithms is true, they must know that I’m Of A Certain Age. But no matter. We haven’t been introduced, but we’re on first-name terms already.

“Hello William, If our 20 month 0% balance transfer wasn’t enough, it also comes with a 0% fee. You can look forward to:” and then it goes into bullet points. Roughly translated, I think it means that if I do whatever it is they want me to do - no doubt they’ll get to it eventually - I can look forward to an experience remarkably similar to the experience of not having a [That Brand Of Credit Card] - for twenty months.

Ah, here it is. The letter is from Brunhild. Name changed to protect the corporate. Brunhild is “Director Of New Customer Accounts”, and it says here, “Security - it’s our middle name.” Not sure about that “our” - oh, wait. “Our dedicated fraud protection team are at your service 24/7.” Not sure about that “are” either - a team is a singular thing, surely? But I can imagine my first-name chum Brunhild Security chuckling affectionately - “That William, he’s such a stickler for grammar, isn’t he?” - and the team chuckling along with her.

I wonder if “at your service 24/7” means they’d do my washing up, or do I have to wait for a fraud to be committed? Boring for them, if they’re on round-the-clock shifts and nobody tries to attack my piggy bank. Perhaps they also get “5% back on the hottest tickets” and “a delicious 5% on food and drink at O2 Academy venues right across the country (exclusions apply**)” That double asterisk, by the way, leads to a footnote that reads “T&Cs apply,” and then there’s a link to a web page where you can find out more.

Well, this all sounds very exciting, Brunhild S. - you could have gone with Security as your first name, you realise? B. Security and then that surname would have been just right, surely, for this job? Although I realise that in our relationship, we've gone past surnames. How about we get together and talk about it, maybe progress things a little further - oh, wait a minute. There’s another footnote on this page. “You may be offered a different credit limit, representative APR, purchase rate or promotional Balance Transfer period to any shown here as it depends on your individual circumstances. Subject to status.” And all that connects up via its asterisk to this sentence. “You may be given a different offer based on your individual circumstances.”

Different from what? Oh, I see. There’s an illustration here. If I transfer … that much … from another credit card - but I haven’t got another credit card - and the interest rate is this, I could end up saving that. If the interest rate is - cor! - I could end up saving that. “Saving” in the sense of not paying to a credit-card company. I see. And - no, wait, I’ve got this, if my status isn’t what Brunhild thinks it is - if I’m not the man she thinks I am - this is actually the illustration of the offer that I won’t get. Oh, Brunhild, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Brunhild, did you write this whole A4 page of small print? And the "accompanying booklet"? It’s very detailed. Well written, though. Accessible, if small. You’ve obviously made an effort - credit where credit’s due, ha ha, geddit? Sorry. But - look, Brunhild, I have a bigger problem. The thing is - don’t laugh, but this is like one of those dating apps where the profile just doesn’t match - never mind. Thing is, Brunhild, I don’t know what your algorithms told you, or my big data's saying about me, but I haven’t got a balance to transfer. Not even a small one. Does that mean we’re never going to meet up and save ourselves a delicious 5%?

Because I’m funny, everybody says so, and I’m sure I could give you a really entertaining - hello? Brunhild, are you there? Hello? Hello?

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"If only the future would take us seriously," he said.

4/10/2018

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Some time ago, in a parallel universe not far from this one, I opened a small store on a high street full of character. I offered for sale - it doesn’t matter what I sold - books and bracelets and charms, and above all, coffee, cakes and small sandwiches. None of it was “to go”; to drink and eat my coffee, cakes and small sandwiches, you had to sit at one of my tiny round bistro tables; to wear one of my bracelets, or use one of my charms, you had to make an appointment to have it fitted, or to learn how to use it.

The books made rules of their own. My store was always full but never crowded, and when the time came, I sought the agreement of my neighbouring stores, and placed more tiny round bistro tables outside, first under the awning, and then, later, under the tree, on the triangular paved area where the high streets met. I hired a waiter and a waitress, two young people from my home village, and I taught them some - not all - of what I knew. Conversation flowed, and there was laughter. The sun shone. Birds sang in the tree.

The spires. It was all so gosh-darned, predictably, boringly, successful that for a while I pretended not to notice the illicit trade in magic beans that had sprung up around two of the tables in the back. And for an equally long while, I contrived not to notice that the intelligence services of three countries had concealed microphones in crevices and corners where they imagined that I would not find them. My store - my cafe - had become a meeting point in a city that had itself become a meeting point, between cultures and nations, on a river that flowed between continents. No, this was not Trieste. But it was a place of freedom, and the uninhibited clash of ideas.

You never came to my cafe, not back then, not that one, but if you had, you would have sat outside and watched, downhill, the tourists massing to visit the famous mosque that had been a cathedral. I would have come out to join you, and pointed also to the spires uphill, and to the just-visible flags of the embassies above the linden trees on the long, wide avenue. But you would have been amused by the tourists, so un-knowing of their surroundings, queuing to see, and perhaps to breathe, the reality of the pictures in their guidebooks. You wouldn’t have wanted to waste your attention on the dreamless sophists.

Passage. Remember Venice? Torcello? I know; I was there. But back to my story. In time, I began to suspect that the deception inherent in the microphones, the illegality of the magic-bean traders, was beginning to taint the cafe. My cooking was off, somehow, and even on the brightest of days, the bracelets and charms in my display windows were failing to catch the sun. When a customer, a tourist, died in convulsions on the floor of the cafe (remember how we used to dispose of the bodies, back in the day?) after eating one of my butter croissants, I decided that the time had come to act. But what to do?

Luck - of a sort - was on my side. I had just replaced the rug over the trap door to the secret passage leading to the grate that gave access to the subterranean drain that carried the city’s and my inconvenient, ah, waste to the river; I had just raised the shutters and gone to flick the ‘Closed’ sign to ‘Open’ - when I happened to see a travelling band of Brexit negotiators passing by on the other side of the street. Ragged they were, and dejected. Inspiration struck. I went across and offered them the use of a table in the back for their discussions about tactics. You would have warned me, I know, but - in no time, they were hard at work: coffee means coffee, they agreed, but decaffeinated could be included in the definition if - I stopped listening and just gave them coffee.

Metal teeth. Oh, that was a hard morning. I lost many customers that day. But the monotony of the Brexit negotiators’ discussion proved a match even for the surveillance states, as I had hoped. Some time around 11am, a shabby, elderly man, wearing a raincoat on a sunny day, shuffled into the cafe and began sticking a screwdriver into cracks in the panelling. “You win,” he said, when he’d finished, and I made him an espresso. We stood at the counter together as he drank it.

“How long will you let them stay here?” he asked me quietly, looking across at the table where the Brexit negotiators were discussing a seating plan. He had looked everywhere, I realised, except at the magic-bean traders. And at one other table. I made a note of that.

“Shouldn’t take more than a week,” I told him.

By lunchtime, a large man with metal teeth had been in with a screwdriver, as had a woman dressed entirely in leather, with extremely sharp-looking spike heels and an AK47 slung over her shoulder - and a screwdriver in her hand. I made them both espressos and watched their eyes. That afternoon, in a slack moment, I went to the three tables that had been ignored, and removed the last three microphones. I gave no explanation for what I was doing, and nobody asked, although one regular customer, as he was leaving, did say to me, “They’ll be gone soon?” I nodded.

Validation. It took three days. As the Brexit negotiators talked, I could feel the magic draining from the cafe. Oh, that was hard. By the morning of the third day, a pall of depression hung over the cafe, the street, the city. The Brexit negotiators were still talking, although somehow none of us could hold the meaning of their words in our heads. The few bracelets I had left out in the display cases were tarnished and grey. Everything was becoming one-dimensional; birds were dropping from the tree.

Finally, realising what was happening, resigned to the steady draining away of magic from the beans in front of them, the no-longer-magic bean traders packed up and left. They were, of course, gunned down on the street outside, but it was just for form’s sake; with the Brexit negotiators continuing to talk, even the gun battle seemed desultory.

I made myself a celebratory ristretto, raised the cup - and nothing changed. Yes, you would have warned me, and yes, I should have known. Looking across at the Brexit negotiators, I felt a moment's nostalgia for the spies and the criminals. That book you were always quoting - The Sophistries of Rational Men, was that the title? - I never did find a copy. The negotiations continued. The light dulled. Outside, a smog formed over the city.

I remember the moment when I realised I would have to do something. A dinosaur the size of a tall building, roaring loudly enough to break windows, came wading upriver to the suspension bridge, menaced the city for a few seconds, then changed its mind and went striding back out to sea. At the same moment, the volcano above the city belched smoke and flame then extinguished itself with a damp sizzle. Clearly I wasn’t finished yet. I thought for a while, and then took my last functioning crystal ball from the lead-lined trunk where I had concealed it, and carried it over to the Brexit negotiators’ table. “I know this would only be an informal validation procedure,” I told them, “but it does work.”

After an entire day of discussions about process, they were ready. The first formal crystal-ball test of a Brexit strategy was scheduled for 9am the following morning. An even deeper hush fell over the city as residents programmed their alarm clocks not to wake them up and tour companies went into voluntary liquidation. But I was optimistic - and sure enough, the dismay at the Brexit negotiators’ table was immediately palpable.

Sheets. Over the course of the morning, as they demonstrated, even to their own satisfaction, that whatever solutions they tried, however many referendums they held, however deviously they constructed strategies for leaving that felt like staying, and vice-versa, the future would still be ignoring them, because the future’s a far too intricate mechanism, affected by far too many factors, to be bothering with the simplistic dictates of bureaucrats - over the course of the morning, as they slipped away one by one to nurse their bafflement, the city and my cafe came alive again.

The sun shone, the birds sang, the volcano rumbled and the dinosaur poked its head up out of the water. I made a note on my order pad - maybe get some interesting criminals for the table in the back? - and scribbled it out. The bell tolled as the door opened and in walked a regular customer.

“Are they all gone?” she said.

“Normal service is resumed,” I told her, and our eyes met: we’d once debated the word “normal” for more than a few moments in the course of a long afternoon spent on white sheets in a borrowed apartment overlooking the river. Yes, I was remembering; she smiled.

“What can we talk about today?” she asked me, the smile still in her voice, as I sprinkled a cinnamon Mona Lisa onto her cappuccino.

“Anything you like,” I replied. “It’s a free country.”

She hesitated. I had taken her by surprise.

“People don’t say that any more,” she said.

“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

“Discuss?”

And we discussed.

Except the usual white and yellow ones. I love the way seriously windy days make everything much clearer, although on rare occasions visibility can be affected.

Interesting, this thing called populism. Not to get into the politics of any of it, anywhere, but it seems to me that if there’s a loud bang, followed by an extended scraping along the hull, the correct response is not to gather on the bridge and redefine a word until it’s in the wrong. I know this ship is unsinkable, and I know that anybody who argues otherwise is totally misinformed at best and dangerously alarmist at worst, but just every now and then, I wonder why nobody is prepared - able? - to mention the water rising up around our ankles.

Yes, I know it’s raining outside, and I know the people handling the navigation aren’t really up to the job, but are we really going to ignore those passengers floating past the windows? Seems to me that when the electorate votes down the prevailing political consensus, there might at least me some scope for questioning our own certainty. The outcomes, not just the answers, are so clear-cut and inevitable? And we’ve got the right one? Good to know. Funny, even.

History is not full of stories in which the crowd - the mob, the revolutionaries, the electorate, call it what you will - marched up to the gates of the Bastille, say, or the Winter Palace, and then packed up and went home again. Social media has not changed human nature to the point at which “no” rises to the surface in whatever is its present form - leave, Trump, Macron, that party in Germany - and then submerges again forever, satisfied that it has made its point.

We’ve started out all metaphorical, so we might as well stay that way. Thought for today is: there’s something in the water.

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What happens at 3am...

Going walkalong

Human rites

Selling the niggle

"If only the future would take us seriously," he said.

Dear Diary: The Archive